tag:learn.bowdoin.edu,2009:/italian/dante//2 2009-11-21T00:18:09Z Movable Type Pro 4.25 tag:learn.bowdoin.edu,2009:/italian/dante//2.5256 2009-11-21T00:09:16Z 2009-11-21T00:18:09Z

Photo: Ruth Caldwell (2009)...

Arielle Saiber Photo: Ruth Caldwell (2009)]]> tag:learn.bowdoin.edu,2009:/italian/dante//2.5255 2009-11-19T15:30:26Z 2009-11-20T11:17:43Z

... " 'The problem with Turkey must be made an international issue,' Spyros Vougias, the deputy minister for public order, said in an e-mailed statement. Last month, Mr. Vougias ordered the closure of the Pagani center -- a converted...

Arielle Saiber ... " 'The problem with Turkey must be made an international issue,' Spyros Vougias, the deputy minister for public order, said in an e-mailed statement. Last month, Mr. Vougias ordered the closure of the Pagani center -- a converted warehouse that had been housing 1,300 migrants -- saying it was 'worse than Dante's inferno.' " ... Niki Kitsantonis, "Migrants Reaching Greece Despite Efforts to Block Them," The New York Times, November 18, 2009]]> tag:learn.bowdoin.edu,2009:/italian/dante//2.5254 2009-11-18T11:08:19Z 2009-11-18T11:19:32Z

"Of course, the subtitle of Sarah Palin's book is An American Life. Because she is the lovely avatar of real Americans -- ordinary, hard-working, God-fearing, common-sense, good, ordinary, real Americans. If you are not living an American life, you...

Arielle Saiber "Of course, the subtitle of Sarah Palin's book is An American Life. Because she is the lovely avatar of real Americans -- ordinary, hard-working, God-fearing, common-sense, good, ordinary, real Americans. If you are not living an American life, you are, to use a Palin coinage, living 'bass-ackwards.'... "I approached reading her book with trepidation, worried I might learn that I am not a real American, dang it, just another dreaded, jaded 'enlightened elite.' "I was born and live in Washington, D.C., after all. Now you'd think that this would be a rather patriotic city to call home, but Palin paints it as a cross between Sodom and Dante's Fifth Circle." ... Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, November 17, 2009 ]]> tag:learn.bowdoin.edu,2009:/italian/dante//2.5253 2009-11-18T10:57:43Z 2009-11-18T11:06:40Z

"...The Gift of Thanks is a scholarly, many-angled examination of what gratitude is and how it functions in our lives. Gratitude is a moral emotion of sorts, Ms. Visser writes, one that is more complicated and more vital than...

Arielle Saiber "...The Gift of Thanks is a scholarly, many-angled examination of what gratitude is and how it functions in our lives. Gratitude is a moral emotion of sorts, Ms. Visser writes, one that is more complicated and more vital than we think. Ms. Visser acknowledges that simple politeness is the grease that keeps society running and, conversely, how much hostility can build up among people when words like "thanks" are not spoken. "In Dante's Inferno, she observes, 'at the bottommost circle of hell, the ungrateful are punished by being eternally frozen in the postures of deference they had failed to perform during their lifetimes: trapped rigid in enveloping ice, they stand erect or upside down, lie prone, or bow face to feet.' "In The Gift of Thanks, however, Ms. Visser is most interested in the kind of gratitude that is not compulsory or self-interested. She writes about the humility required to be genuinely grateful, and the essential ability to climb out of one's own head..." Dwight Garner, "Gratitude's Grace Can Be Itself a Gift," The New York Times, November 17, 2009 ]]> tag:learn.bowdoin.edu,2009:/italian/dante//2.5252 2009-11-18T10:51:37Z 2009-11-18T10:57:25Z

"...Mr. Kobekin's Hamlet of the Danes, Russian Comedy, is hardly a comedy, except perhaps -- as the composer observed -- as the word was used by the likes of Dante. Nor, apart from language, is it notably Russian. It...

Arielle Saiber "...Mr. Kobekin's Hamlet of the Danes, Russian Comedy, is hardly a comedy, except perhaps -- as the composer observed -- as the word was used by the likes of Dante. Nor, apart from language, is it notably Russian. It is a brash re-telling of Shakespeare's play in contemporary words..." George Loomis, "Moscow's Second Stage Revels in the Homegrown," The New York Times, November 17, 2009]]> tag:learn.bowdoin.edu,2009:/italian/dante//2.5251 2009-11-16T10:24:25Z 2009-11-16T10:29:25Z

"This book is a modern gothic. It pairs images of people walking alone in nighttime city streets with 90 different English translations I collected of the first lines of Dante's Inferno. The images, showing a crowd of solitary figures,...

Arielle Saiber "This book is a modern gothic. It pairs images of people walking alone in nighttime city streets with 90 different English translations I collected of the first lines of Dante's Inferno. The images, showing a crowd of solitary figures, are selected from the same archive as used for Two of Us (the extraordinary Joseph Selle collection at the Visual Studies Workshop which contains over a million negatives from a company of street photographers working in San Francisco from the 40's to the 70's). The book is set up in a repetitious way, to stress a sense of similarity, endlessness and interchangeability. The images are re-expressions of each other, and so are the texts." Elisabeth Tonnard Contributed by Guy Raffa (University of Texas - Austin)]]> tag:learn.bowdoin.edu,2009:/italian/dante//2.5250 2009-11-12T13:08:20Z 2009-11-12T13:16:18Z

"One of the highlights of Performa 09 is Joan Jonas's "Reading Dante II," which began its five-night run (with one matinee) at the Performing Garage Tuesday night. It amounts to a 60-minute multimedia collage in the round with moving...

Arielle Saiber "One of the highlights of Performa 09 is Joan Jonas's "Reading Dante II," which began its five-night run (with one matinee) at the Performing Garage Tuesday night. It amounts to a 60-minute multimedia collage in the round with moving parts and a smorgasbord of audio accompaniment. This includes music, loud crashes, traffic noises, and voices reading fragments of the work's inspiration: the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso of Dante's Divine Comedy. ... Roberta Smith, The New York Times, November 11, 2009 See also: Joan Jonas on Dante in Artforum Performa: The Performing Garage 33 Wooster St, New York Contributed by Aisha Woodward (Bowdoin, '08) ]]> tag:learn.bowdoin.edu,2009:/italian/dante//2.5249 2009-10-25T12:35:35Z 2009-10-25T12:38:05Z

Contributed by Charlie Russell-Schlesinger (Bowdoin, '08)...

Arielle Saiber Contributed by Charlie Russell-Schlesinger (Bowdoin, '08)]]> tag:learn.bowdoin.edu,2009:/italian/dante//2.5248 2009-10-15T10:12:37Z 2009-10-15T10:23:11Z

"For most of the 217 years since its founding under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange was the high temple of American capitalism. Behind its Greco-Roman facade, traders raised a Dante-esque din in their...

Arielle Saiber "For most of the 217 years since its founding under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange was the high temple of American capitalism. Behind its Greco-Roman facade, traders raised a Dante-esque din in their pursuit of the almighty dollar. Good times or bad, the daily melee on the cavernous trading floor made the Big Board the greatest marketplace for stocks in the world." Graham Bowley, The New York Times, October 14, 2009]]> tag:learn.bowdoin.edu,2009:/italian/dante//2.5247 2009-09-27T17:57:35Z 2009-09-27T18:03:08Z

"The sculpture garden features high relief marble carvings depicting scenes from Dante's Divine Comedy. The centerpiece is a solid marble sculpture entitled, The Commedia Block, which is carved on all four sides showing the divisions of Inferno, Purgatorio and...

Arielle Saiber "The sculpture garden features high relief marble carvings depicting scenes from Dante's Divine Comedy. The centerpiece is a solid marble sculpture entitled, The Commedia Block, which is carved on all four sides showing the divisions of Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, as well as portraits of Dante, Virgil, and Beatrice." http://www.casagaliano.com/image_gallery_dante_alighieri Information about the The Casa Galiano ]]> tag:learn.bowdoin.edu,2009:/italian/dante//2.5246 2009-09-27T17:49:29Z 2009-09-27T17:57:02Z

" With modern presidencies, we have to watch the poignant tableau of such leaders realizing that they have squandered their chance for greatness even as they suffer the indignity of rejection by those who once sought their blessing. "These...

Arielle Saiber " With modern presidencies, we have to watch the poignant tableau of such leaders realizing that they have squandered their chance for greatness even as they suffer the indignity of rejection by those who once sought their blessing. "These painful periods for W. and Bill Clinton, falling low after starting with such grand hopes, are recounted in two new books. "...The pen-and-tell by Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer, 'Speech-less,' is being denounced by some former Bushies and Republican commentators as a 'Devil Wears Prada' betrayal. (Except, in this case, the Devil wears Crocs. Preparing to make a prime-time address explaining why the 2008 economic bailout wasn't socialism--'We got to make this understandable for the average cat,' the president tells his speechwriters--W. pads around the White House in Crocs, an image that's hard to get out of your head.) " 'The guy is a worm,' Bill Bennett told Wolf Blitzer about Latimer, adding: 'He needs to read his Dante. He probably hasn't read The Inferno. The lowest circles of hell are for people who are disloyal in the way this guy is disloyal, and at the very lowest point Satan chews on their bodies.' " ... Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, September 26, 2009]]> tag:learn.bowdoin.edu,2009:/italian/dante//2.5245 2009-09-25T10:04:52Z 2009-09-25T10:15:06Z

"After presenting their highly acclaimed HELL, based on Dante's Inferno, Emio Greco | PC has completed [purgatorio] POPOPERA which will have its NYC premiere at The Joyce Theater. The company takes its inspiration from Dante's literary depiction of a...

Arielle Saiber "After presenting their highly acclaimed HELL, based on Dante's Inferno, Emio Greco | PC has completed [purgatorio] POPOPERA which will have its NYC premiere at The Joyce Theater. The company takes its inspiration from Dante's literary depiction of a geographical place and feeling of transition that provides the opening for inner transformation. Greco and Scholten have said, 'whereas in HELL we let our dancers wander round the same circles each time, in [purgatorio] POPOPERA they break out of them. The will, the need to live and especially the hope for the future are the essential motives. In [purgatorio] POPOPERA we try to show the audience other images than it expects of those overly familiar themes that cling to the concept of purgatory (catharsis, purification through suffering, ...) in order to approach these themes from new angles.' The company invites audiences to witness the transformation and synergies between dancers' bodies and the lustrous black electric guitars they carry in this performance that melds dance with rock concert. The piece features original music composed by Bang-on-a-Can founder Michael Gordon, performed live by the dancers and soprano Michaela Riener..." The Joyce Theater Ickamsterdam ]]> tag:learn.bowdoin.edu,2009:/italian/dante//2.5244 2009-09-17T19:50:35Z 2009-09-17T19:54:35Z

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, illustrations for the book Spirit of the Ages greeting cards Contributed by Virginia Jewiss (Yale Humanities Program)...

Arielle Saiber Dante Gabriel Rossetti, illustrations for the book Spirit of the Ages greeting cards Contributed by Virginia Jewiss (Yale Humanities Program) ]]> tag:learn.bowdoin.edu,2009:/italian/dante//2.5243 2009-09-07T09:44:09Z 2009-09-07T09:52:46Z

"The fresh hell described by Robert Olen Butler's new novel is crammed with random celebrities... Patrolled by Satan's minions (among them, two of the Bee Gees) dressed in powder-blue jumpsuits, it's filled with bookstores that optimistically open with new...

Arielle Saiber "The fresh hell described by Robert Olen Butler's new novel is crammed with random celebrities... Patrolled by Satan's minions (among them, two of the Bee Gees) dressed in powder-blue jumpsuits, it's filled with bookstores that optimistically open with new owners at every sunrise -- only to go out of business by the end of each day. If the books they can't sell in hell are maddeningly uneven, ever bouncing between passable wit and sophomoric giggles. Mr. Butler's slapdash Hell deserves shelf space there... "Somehow, in the course of Mr. Butler's fever dream of a plot, Hell also includes Dante's Beatrice, now a film noir dame contending with Humphrey Bogart, who pines for Lauren Bacall; a chorus of singing cockroaches enamored of the phrase 'poopy butt'; Michael Jackson, doing a woefully inadequate job of singing Wagner and consigned to 'Everland, the densely populated molester estate on the edge of the city'; Bobby Fischer, playing chess with a computer from Hadassah; Jerry Seinfeld, whose jokes all bomb; and Celine Dion, who just won't quit singing that damn 'Titanic' song." ... Janet Maslin, The New York Times, September 6, 2009]]> tag:learn.bowdoin.edu,2009:/italian/dante//2.5242 2009-08-30T12:39:06Z 2009-08-30T12:47:33Z

"THE last time that the artist Sandow Birk found himself concerned about responses from Muslims was in 2006. He was developing a film using puppets, inspired by his illustrations for a three-volume English-language version of Dante's "Divine Comedy," when...

Arielle Saiber "THE last time that the artist Sandow Birk found himself concerned about responses from Muslims was in 2006. He was developing a film using puppets, inspired by his illustrations for a three-volume English-language version of Dante's "Divine Comedy," when riots broke out over the Danish newspaper cartoons representing Muhammad. The outcry prompted Mr. Birk's film team to reconsider its own representation of the prophet. "We had Muhammad in our film because he was in Dante's poem," he said. "Dante put him in 'Inferno' as someone who supposedly created schisms." He argued at the time for respecting Dante's treatment of Muhammad, as artists like Gustave Doré had done before him. But the film's producers were spooked, and Muhammad disappeared from the film. "I thought it was wrong to act out of fear," Mr. Birk said from his studio here. "But I was upset for another reason too," he admitted. His film collaborators didn't know at the time, but quietly -- privately -- he had already embarked on another potentially controversial project: an effort to make by hand what he called a "personal Koran." Curious to learn more about the book at the heart of Islam and the center of so many global events, in 2004 he began transcribing English translations of the book's 114 chapters and painting alongside them contemporary American scenes (though with no representations of Muhammad). "I couldn't help but think," he said, "if this five-second clip in the Dante film could stir such debate, what was going to happen when I started showing my Koran?" He will soon find out. The first exhibitions of Mr. Birk's "American Qur'an," a work-on-paper series that is roughly a third complete, is about to open: 30 hand-painted pages at Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco starting on Thursday and another 30 at Koplin Del Rio gallery in Culver City starting Friday. (A New York exhibition slated for this fall at the P.P.O.W. Gallery was rescheduled for winter 2010 after a gallery fire.)" ... Jori Finkel, The New York Times, August 28, 2009 See information about Birk's "Dante's Inferno" film here]]>